


Useful Crafts

by Minutia_R



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Book 2: The Son of Neptune, But only a little, Gen, Harm to Animals, Jossed, Monster of the Week, No Blood of Olympus Spoilers, Quests, secret history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-11 21:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2083458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Annabeth burst out of her seat and started pacing across the room, her hand twitching near her knife where it was strapped to her thigh.  “Seriously?  Seriously?  Gaea is waking up, the giants are being reborn, Percy’s been kidnapped by the Romans, and that doggerel-spouting prettyboy is sending us on a quest because one of his campers lost his fucking teddy bear?”</i>
</p><p>Annabeth just wants to find Percy.  Leo just wants to work on his ship.  Rachel just wants to play Galaxy Angel Eternal Lovers.  Unfortunately Apollo has other ideas.  Set around the same time as the events of <i>The Son of Neptune</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leo

Late one Saturday night--Leo checked his watch and corrected that to _early one Sunday morning_. No wonder the few campers who hadn’t managed to sneak away while his attention was elsewhere had fallen asleep at their stations. Leo was pretty tired himself, come to think of it, but he’d been _this close_ to getting the aerial gyrostabilizers to work right when Annabeth came into Bunker 9. Her boots rang on the floor (which made Nyssa shift and snort but not wake up, okay, maybe he _had_ been working his cabinmates a little too hard) and he could see the dents in her shoulders, wider than the straps on her Camp Half-Blood tank top, that meant she’d just peeled out of her armor. She was dirty and sweaty and looked really pissed off. “Leo!” she shouted. “Hey, Valdez!”

Leo closed the panel he’d been working on and leaned out over the Argo II’s railing. Since Annabeth hadn’t started in on _isn’t it done yet_ and _can we go get Percy now_ , Leo had a pretty good idea what this was about. “Look, we agreed--Bunker 9 doesn’t count as part of the Hephaestus cabin for inspections.”

“I know. The oracle wants you.”

“Gods damn it.” Leo stripped off his gloves and ran a hand through his hair. “What does that crazy white girl want now?”

Annabeth--the local chapter of the League of Crazy White Girls--glowered up at him. Leo shrugged, to show she didn’t scare him. Which was a lie, she scared him shitless, but she didn’t have to know that. As for Rachel Elizabeth Dare, he’d met her at the head counselors’ meeting after the quest last winter, and that was enough. Not only was the whole prophecy thing creepy, she had more money than your average three gods, so she wasn’t the most comfortable person to hang out with. Also, Apollo had given her a better gaming system than there was in the entire Hephaestus cabin, and she only used it to play Japanese dating sims, which was just wrong.

“How in Tartarus should I know?” said Annabeth. “If it was up to me, your skinny ass would be chained to a workbench until you got this crate in the air. But the oracle calls, you jump.”

Annabeth was in full raging bitch mode today. The one-tenth of Leo’s mind that wasn’t cowering in terror tried to come up with a biting response as he shimmied down the ladder to floor level. Then he remembered what Piper had told him, that one time a Hecate camper had hexed him for what he’d thought was a harmless remark. _When you come across a demigod in a really foul mood_ , she’d said, _there’s something you should know . . ._

“Bad dreams?” said Leo.

Annabeth whipped her head around like she was about to bite his off. Then she sighed and let her shoulders drop. “Yeah. Leo, I--” Her hand moved to the pocket of her shorts, like she was about to take something out, but then she changed her mind. “Never mind. Just, next time you’re in the grocery store, don’t accept any free samples, okay?”

“Huh?”

Annabeth shook her head. “Dreams. I saw Percy, and he--gods damn it!” She flipped her knife out of its sheath, and before Leo could blink it was embedded in a tree twenty feet away. A bunch of metal birds flew up into the sky, squawking angrily, and a girl in a green chiton melted out of the tree.

“Hey! Watch what you’re--eep!” She was gone again. Leo wasn’t sure if it was Annabeth or himself who’d freaked her out. Annabeth had thrown the knife, but for some reason dryads didn’t tend to like the guy who could summon fire. Go figure.

Annabeth braced her left hand against the tree and pulled the knife out. “I lived in San Francisco for years, I should _know_ the place, I should _recognize_ it, I should _be_ there--sorry, Moira,” she added, maybe to the absent dryad. “I was hoping . . . maybe Rachel had some new information. But she didn’t seem real positive, and she wouldn’t say anything until you were there.”

“Well, uh . . . here I am?” There was definitely something more comforting and less awkward that Leo should have said, but he had no idea what it was. Annabeth gave him a half-smile.

“Yeah,” she said.

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the oracle’s cave. Leo had a paperclip chain that wrapped several times around his wrist by the time they got there, but he made it disappear into his tool belt when Rachel pulled aside the curtain before he and Annabeth had a chance to announce their presence.

“Oh, good.” Rachel’s voice was brisk as she ushered them inside. “I need you guys to go on a quest with me.”

“You what, mortal girl?” said Annabeth.

“A quest? You know, one of those things you demigod types are always rushing around on?” Rachel flopped down on a cushion, and Annabeth sat too, so Leo figured he’d better give it a try, even though Rachel’s beanbag things were too soft and he didn’t know what to do with his legs. “I could make it all official if you want.”

“Wait, wait, back up,” said Leo, waving his hands. “I’m pretty sure you can’t just send people out on quests like that.”

“Oh, I totally can. Like, I’m out of milk for my morning coffee?” Rachel rolled her eyes back into her head and made her voice all spooky. “ _Through fires of famine and winds of war, three brave half-bloods shall go to the store . . ._ ”

Annabeth punched her on the arm. “You’ve been hanging out with Apollo too much.”

“Delphic oracle? Hanging out with Apollo is pretty much the job description? You’d think I’d hear from him less often with the Olympus lockdown and all, but I think he just takes it as a challenge to find more obscure ways to communicate. Like today’s New York Times crossword puzzle--”

Rachel pulled a newspaper from under the cushion she was sitting on, and Annabeth made a claw over her heart to ward off evil. “You know you’re the only one in a forty-mile radius who can do those gods-damned things.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll read out the long words for you.”

“Fuck you, Dare.”

Rachel nibbled delicately on the end of her pencil. “Right. Well, this one I think even you’ll be able to get. Five letters, _high-speed pursuit_.”

“Chase,” said Annabeth.

“Four letters. _Issue a challenge_. Six letters. _Tanker that ran aground in Prince William Sound._ ”

“Okay, okay.” Annabeth slumped back on her cushions. “I get it.”

“Great!” Leo chirped. “Anyone feel like filling me in?”

“The _Exxon Valdez_ oil spill was the largest ever in the United States until earlier this year. Entire habitats were wrecked, salmon, sea otters, seals . . . sorry,” Annabeth said, trailing off. “If you’d heard Juniper ranting about it you’d remember too.”

Leo pulled in his shoulders a little. “I didn’t do it,” he said.

“I’d hope not, since it happened in 1989 and you wouldn’t be born for another six years, eight months, and fourteen days. November tenth,” Rachel added.

Usually Leo would be flattered if a pretty girl remembered his birthday. He’d never actually told Rachel his, though. “Has anyone ever mentioned that it’s really annoying when you do that?”

“Yes.” Flat and matter-of-fact, like it wouldn’t even occur to her to care what the peasants thought. “It’s pretty clear that Apollo has a message for the three of us.”

“Maybe it’s just an instruction to you. _Dare, chase Valdez!_ ” Leo waggled his eyebrows.

Piper would have laughed. Annabeth probably would have slugged him. Rachel just looked at him for a long, cool minute while he tried not to wipe the grease stains off his cheek or straighten his shirt.

“Cute,” she said finally. He wasn’t sure if she was talking about looks or his puzzle-solving skills. “But no. Mine is a jealous god.” She scribbled a bit more on the newspaper then spread it out flat in front of her, tapping the crossword puzzle with her pencil. “ _Here’s_ the instruction.”

Leo and Annabeth both craned over to see the paper. Rachel wrote in clear block capitals, and maybe the words weren’t that long or hard, but there were no spaces between them, and a jumble of letters marched off in all directions. Leo drummed his fingers on his knee, spelling out each letter in the line Rachel was pointing at in Morse code. “Fin . . . no, find. My son’s . . . toy?”

Annabeth burst out of her seat and started pacing across the room, her hand twitching near her knife where it was strapped to her thigh. “Seriously? _Seriously?_ Gaea is waking up, the giants are being reborn, Percy’s been kidnapped by the Romans, and that doggerel-spouting prettyboy is sending us on a quest because one of his campers lost his fucking teddy bear?”

Rachel winced. The temperature in the room rose five-and-a-half degrees in the space of two seconds. (Leo had a good sense for things like that.) Annabeth didn’t seem to notice. She sat back down and folded her arms. “Anything else? Any clue what exactly we’re looking for, or where it is?”

“Just one. An image, right before I woke up.” Rachel started drawing in the margin of her paper. A rectangle, wider than it was long. A shape on top of it, like an old-fashioned measuring tape unspooling.

“It’s the Guggenheim!” said Annabeth.

“You recognize it?” said Rachel.

Annabeth gave her a look like, _please_. “It’s the only Frank Lloyd Wright building in New York City--I mean, unless you count the house on Staten Island. It completely revolutionized the way people think about museum design.”

“That’s where we’ll start our search, then,” said Rachel. “Luckily, I’m a member.”

“No way,” said Leo. “I’ve got the aerial gyrostabilizers to work on, I can’t just drop everything and go to New York City.” He was sure Annabeth would back him up--she was the one who had threatened to chain him to a workbench, a fate that was looking better every minute. But she just turned a pitying look on him.

“You’re still pretty new at this demigod business, aren’t you? Believe me, the only thing worse than being made the gods’ messenger boy is what happens when you don’t cooperate. You want to save your defiance for when it’s really important. This? Pfft. We’ll go, we’ll get Apollo’s sacred Candyland set, and hopefully we can all get on with our lives.” She stood up. “I’m going to pack. You guys should too. Meet you at the Big House in half an hour.”

She left without another word, leaving Leo alone with Rachel. He got a measuring tape out of his tool belt and started flicking out and retracting the first couple of inches, mostly so he wouldn’t wipe that grease stain off his cheek.

“Annabeth’s right,” said Rachel. “The gods can be a pain in the ass, and they never give you what you ask for, but sometimes they give you what you need. This airy-gyro-thingy--you need help with it, right?”

Leo had it under control. What he _needed_ was people and gods to give him enough time to work it out on his own. He walked over to a corner of the cave where there was a bunch of video game controllers and consoles and wires all jumbled together. “And you need all this to play Eternal Angle Lovers, huh?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Shining Apollo, why do I even try? Out. Pack.” He ducked through the curtain at the cave entrance, and she shouted after him, “And it’s Galaxy Angel Eternal Lovers!”

Down the hill, out of the forest, back to Cabin Nine. Home sweet home, even if he barely saw it nowadays, which was kind of a shame considering how sweet his bed was. A lot of his half-siblings were crashed out on their beds, but Jake Mason was up, pinning a schedule on the door. Leo had kind of hoped to get out without talking to anyone, but he really did need to talk to Jake.

“Hey, Leo. Nice to see you once in a while.”

Leo answered Jake’s smile with a suspicious squint. He couldn’t tell if this was friendly teasing or not. Not that he could really blame him--when Jake had, with relief, handed over the head counselor’s position to Leo, he hadn’t realized he’d still be stuck with all the day-to-day work. Sucked for him, but it wasn’t Leo’s fault. He had stuff to do.

“I just came by to pack. I’m off on a quest.” Leo shrugged, started rooting around in the fridge for ambrosia squares. “Oracle’s orders, what are you going to do? You’re in charge till I get back.”

“Yeah, there’s a change,” Jake muttered. “Need anything from the armory?”

Leo looked at the wall opposite, hung with magical weapons just as good as the ones you could get at the camp’s main armory, and much better looked-after. Swords and spears glinted back at him, wicked-looking crossbows and shiny bronze quarrels, a massive war-hammer--well, that was closer. If he could lift it. He wasn’t really comfortable with any of it, though. Hadn’t gone to a combat class since--what, February? He’d been _busy_. He slipped the ambrosia squares into his toolbelt, gave it a pat. “Nah, I’m good.”

“If you say so,” said Jake. _He_ could use a war-hammer. He’d fought in the Titan war and shit. He should be going off on a quest--now that he was out of the body cast and all--and Leo should be staying at camp and working. But that wasn’t how Apollo wanted it.

Leo went to the door and checked the schedule, just to show he was taking an interest. “Aw, man, no, you can’t do that,” he said. Jake came to look over his shoulder--well, over the top of his head. “You’ve got Nyssa down teaching arts and crafts morning and afternoon. She was working all night, she needs to sleep, and I want her supervising on the _Argo II_ this afternoon.” If Leo wasn’t going to be around, there wasn’t anyone else he’d trust to install the radar array besides Nyssa. Maybe not a good idea to tell Jake that. “Here, tell you what, if you take arts and crafts this afternoon, you can supervise on the _Argo II_ this evening. Lou Ellen from Hecate is going to be coming over to help with the enchantments in the galley.”

“Really?” Jake’s face split into a genuine grin. “Thanks, man, I owe you.”

“No problem.” The galley was something Jake couldn’t screw up too bad. And if he had no chance with Lou Ellen, who’d been secretly going out with Miranda Gardiner for the last month, it wouldn’t be right for Leo to pass on what Piper’d told him in confidence, would it? He walked up to the Big House, whistling.

Since the extent of his packing had been to grab some ambrosia from the fridge, Leo thought he’d be there first, but he’d forgotten just how terrifyingly efficient Annabeth was. She was already sitting by the fireplace with Chiron, deep in planning.

“The Guggenheim Museum was built by Frank Lloyd Wright--” Chiron was saying, and Annabeth snorted.

“Teach your grandmother, Chiron.”

“--son of Apollo,” Chiron finished.

“Oh! Now that I didn’t know.” Annabeth frowned. “It makes a lot of sense, though. So this . . . toy we’re looking for, you think it once belonged to Frank Lloyd Wright?”

Chiron shook his head. “I can’t say for sure. But . . . you’re familiar with how his first Taliesin studio burned down, and his family was murdered?”

“I didn’t do it,” said Leo, sitting in one of the armchairs. It was a lot more comfortable than Rachel’s beanbag.

Annabeth was thinking too hard even to be annoyed with him. “No, it was a disgruntled servant . . . it wasn’t a disgruntled servant, was it.”

“Indeed not,” said Chiron. “I don’t know exactly what it was--Frank and I hadn’t spoken for several years at that point--”

“You taught _Frank Lloyd Wright_ and never told me?” Annabeth yelped indignantly. “You know what, we’ll have this conversation later. Go on, Taliesin, monster attack.”

“Well, much of his collection was destroyed in the fire. Hundreds of Japanese woodblock prints, and . . . other things, of less interest to mortals. What was left he moved to more secure locations. Again, I don’t know where, but--it’s significant that the attack on Taliesin happened when Frank _wasn’t_ there. The monsters, whatever they were, weren’t simply drawn by the smell of demigod. There was something they wanted. And if they’ve managed to pick up its trail again, after all these years . . .”

“Then Apollo wants us to defend it,” Annabeth finished. “Any idea what it is?”

“Other than a powerful magical artifact?” Chiron shrugged. “I’m sorry, my dear, I have no idea.”

That was when Rachel appeared in the doorway, backpack over one shoulder and Argos at her back. “Hey, guys, is the briefing over?”

“Yeah, just about,” said Annabeth, getting out of her chair. “Unless there was anything else, Chiron?”

“Only to wish you luck, and the blessings of the gods on your journey.”

Annabeth snorted again. Maybe it was a horsey habit she’d picked up from Chiron. “I’ll take the luck. And I’ll fill you in on the way, Rachel. Come on, let’s roll.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, Galaxy Angel Eternal Lovers didn't come out in English until 2013. I guess Rachel is playing it in Japanese? Also, I am not making any of this up about Frank Lloyd Wright. He was TOTALLY a son of Apollo.


	2. Annabeth

Annabeth shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position without dislodging Leo, who’d fallen asleep on her shoulder less than five miles out of Camp Half-Blood. When he woke up, he was going to be mortified--not to mention convinced that she was going to kill him--but for now it was . . . nice, honestly. If she looked out the window and let her mind drift . . . .

Well, she couldn’t pretend it was Percy. That would be weird and creepy. Besides, Percy never ran this hot, and if it had been Percy Annabeth would have had to shove him off if she didn’t want her shirt covered in drool. Which she didn’t. Maybe it was some super special son-of-the-sea-god power, but it was gross.

Leo wasn’t Percy. But he was a good kid (who--again--would be mortified if he knew that was how Annabeth thought of him. She hadn’t thought of _herself_ as a kid since she was seven years old. Which just went to show that being Athena’s daughter didn’t grant you immunity from being dumb sometimes.) And--she’d spent so much time on the road by herself, trying to track down any clue to Percy’s whereabouts. And at camp, everyone looked up to her, expected her to have the answers to everything--and treated her like a grenade with the pin just taken out. Not that she could really blame them.

But gods, she’d been so alone. She’d missed this, the way it had been even before Percy, when it was just her and Thalia and Luke. The weight and warmth of another person, trust based in purest necessity: _We all have to sleep sometimes. Watch my back, and I’ll watch yours._

The way it must have been at the beginning of humanity, before the Mist had hidden the monsters and the primal chaos from mortal view, back when the gods were young.

Rachel, sitting on Leo’s other side, twisted around to reach into the back of the back of the van. “Strawberry?” she said.

“Thanks,” said Annabeth.

Rachel got a box out, set it on her lap, passed a strawberry to Annabeth and popped one in her own mouth. “Didn’t think you’d had breakfast.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you drag me out on a quest at seven in the morning.” Annabeth reached for another strawberry with her far hand. Leo muttered something in Spanish.

“Didn’t get you out of bed, did I? I found you in the practice arena, beating the crap out of a dummy. Rough night?”

Leo had asked the same question. Annabeth had almost told him--well, she’d told him the truth. Just not all of it.

Now she was tempted, again, to come clean. If anyone could give her answers about her mother, it was Rachel. But Annabeth had the feeling that Rachel was holding back information of her own. “You haven’t been painting this summer,” said Annabeth.

Rachel shrugged and ate another strawberry. “I want to expand my range. Try out different media, you know? I’ve been doing some stuff with abstract sculpture.”

“Uh-huh. And this wouldn’t have anything to do with _what_ you’d be painting if you did pick up a paintbrush, would it? Percy told me--you painted the Battle of Manhattan before it happened. And Luke.”

“How’d he know that--I never showed him--”

“Same way that I know he’s being chased by gorgons in Bargain Mart uniforms. It doesn’t matter. Look, Rachel--if there’s anything you know, you’ve got to tell me.”

Rachel looked out of her window, avoiding Annabeth’s eyes. “I’ve seen some stuff. But it’s all confused. I’ve seen Camp Half-Blood burned to the ground, I’ve seen you dead in a dozen different ways--are you happy now? Would you like a mural of it in the Big House?”

“No,” Annabeth admitted with a shiver. “But--”

“I’ve told you everything I can--that would help. And as soon as I find out anything else useful, you’ll be the first to know, I promise.”

_Swear it on the River Styx_ , Annabeth almost said. But there was no point. Either she trusted Rachel or she didn’t, and she did. And Rachel had just promised that she didn’t have any useful information that she hadn’t already shared. So there was really no point in telling her about the Athenian drachma that was currently burning a hole in Annabeth’s pocket, even though she’d tried to leave it behind at camp. That was a puzzle that Annabeth would have to solve for herself.

Anyway, it wasn’t the problem she had to solve now. “Did you know Frank Lloyd Wright was a son of Apollo?” she said.

Rachel twisted her hair up off her neck, then let it fall back down. “I’m his oracle, he doesn’t tell me everything. Sometimes it seems like he doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Mm,” said Annabeth, reaching for another strawberry. She decided to sidestep a bitching session about the gods--as satisfying as that might have been--in order to get Rachel up to speed on their current mission. It turned out she had to backtrack and explain a lot, because Rachel was _sadly ignorant_ about Frank Lloyd Wright’s early career.

Turning onto 5th Avenue, Argus swerved around a bicycle messenger and leaned on the horn. Rachel held onto the door to steady herself and stuck her tongue out at Annabeth. “Yeah, and when our next quest involves tracking down Andy Warhol’s mystical soup can, let’s see how you do.”

Annabeth was spared having to answer because just then Argus pulled up to the museum. She poked Leo in the ribs instead. “Mmmh . . . aaah!” He jumped away from her like she was the one with unnaturally hot skin. “Sorry-oh-gods-don’t-kill-me!”

“If I was gonna do that I wouldn’t have woken you up first,” said Annabeth. “Less screaming that way. C’mon, we’re here.”

Rachel ate the last strawberry from the box, grabbed her backpack, and climbed out of the van, calling “Thanks for the ride, Argus!” over her shoulder. Leo and Annabeth scrambled after her. Argus lifted his hand in farewell, the eye in the center of his palm winking. Then he drove off to make his deliveries, leaving the three of them on the sidewalk.

“Ready?” said Annabeth.

“For a visit to a museum?” said Rachel. “I think I can handle it.”

Leo tilted his head back, and back. “It really does look like a giant measuring tape. Weird.”

“And you really look like a tourist,” said Annabeth, because she doubted Leo would appreciate anything she had to say about the graceful lines of the building, or its innovative use of light and space. Giant measuring tape! “Let’s go inside before somebody picks your pocket.”

“Don’t keep anything in my pockets.” Leo hooked a thumb through his tool belt. “And I’d like to see someone try to pick this.” But he followed Annabeth, and Annabeth followed Rachel. The museum was just opening, so there wasn’t much of a line at the ticket windows. Rachel led them past anyway, and straight into the rotunda.

Annabeth had been to the Guggenheim a couple of times before; not as often as she’d have liked. Just like the previous times, the view from the entrance dazzled her. The sense of wide-open space, the fall of light from the skylight--she almost missed the part where a smartly-dressed woman in her twenties came up to them. Cornrowed hair, lip stud, a name tag that read _Nicole_.

“Miss Dare, how lovely to see you again. And . . .” she leaned in towards Leo, her smile getting wider. “Is this your first visit to the Guggenheim, young man?”

“Oh, gods,” Rachel muttered under her breath. Her freckles disappeared entirely as her face went a darker red than her hair. “Nicole, um . . . Leo--he’s older than he looks--he’s not from the project, he’s a friend.”

“Oh.” Nicole blinked uncertainly. “Well . . . enjoy your visit, all three of you. If there’s anything you need . . .”

“Sure,” said Rachel. “Thanks, Nicole. We’re just going to . . . look around, for now.”

Annabeth had seen Rachel get the VIP treatment more than once. It embarrassed Rachel, but she was usually really polite about it--it was the first time Annabeth could remember her letting the person she was talking to see her flustered like that. As they left Nicole behind, Leo said, “What was that about? She was acting like it was my first day of kindergarten.”

“It’s nothing,” said Rachel, still scarlet.

“It’s not nothing,” said Leo.

Rachel twisted a hand in her hair. “There’s--there’s this group I’m involved with, we run educational programs for kids who’ve had their art classes in school cut, and the Guggenheim--”

“So this lady was being all friendly because she thought I was your _charity case?_ ”

“There’s _nothing wrong_ with the kids in the project,” Rachel snapped back. “So I’ll thank you not to act like they have something to be ashamed of just because our government--”

“Uh . . . guys,” Annabeth interrupted. “Keep it down? Mortals are staring.” There were a lot of things that two demigods and an oracle on a quest could count on the Mist hiding, but a shouting match wasn’t one of them.

“Sorry,” said Rachel. Leo didn’t say anything, but he shut up, so good enough.

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Rachel strode back towards the entrance, swinging her backpack forward and taking her wallet out. She shoved a ten-dollar bill into a clear box on the wall. “O goddesses, accept my offering.”

The morning light through the skylight was leaving a smudge of a rainbow on the floor, but . . . “Iris doesn’t accept mortal cash,” said Annabeth, digging into her own backpack. “I think I’ve got a drachma here--” not the Athenian one-- “who are you trying to call?”

“That wasn’t for Iris,” said Rachel. “It’s not a good idea to use a temple without leaving an offering for the resident god.”

“This is a museum,” said Annabeth.

“Yes. A shrine to the muses.” Rachel shouldered her backpack and raised her eyebrows. “What did you think the word meant?”

Annabeth shook her head. “You’re a lot more religious about this stuff than anyone else I know. So, are your oracle senses telling you anything?”

Rachel squinted. “There’s a faint path, yeah. Who knows what it’s leading to, but . . . this way.”

She went up the spiral path of the rotunda, keeping her pace gallery-walker slow. Annabeth pretended to look at the paintings. Leo was fiddling with some twists of wire and wingnuts out of his tool belt, which was really distracting and might get them into trouble, but if Annabeth told him to stop he’d just start doing something even more distracting, and besides they might turn out to need whatever it was he was building. Rachel--the only one who would actually be interested in what looked like maps hastily scribbled on whatever scraps of paper the artist had happened to find in the bottom of her handbag--was still squinting at the invisible path. One level up, two levels, and a sharp turn to a flatter exhibition space when Leo gave a strangled squeak and edged closer to Annabeth.

“Mr. D’s fan club,” he hissed.

Annabeth followed his look. There was a group of hipster girls wearing flower crowns . . . except there were no flowers. Ivy wreaths. One of them had a pinecone sticking out of the flap of her distressed vintage briefcase.

“Mr. D’s . . . what?” said Rachel.

Annabeth made a frantic lower-your-volume gesture, and pointed with her chin. “The path goes right past them, doesn’t it,” she whispered.

“No, actually, it’s this way.” Rachel’s mutter was still too loud for Annabeth’s peace of mind, but praise the gods, the girl had an indoor voice after all. Clarion Ladies Academy must have been teaching something, anyway.

“Then let’s get out of here, quick. Maenads. Leo, Piper and Jason had a run-in with them a while back. How’d you get rid of them then, Leo?”

“Built a trap,” Leo whispered. He was keeping pace with Annabeth, but his eyes kept flicking back to the maenads. “Piper charmspoke them into it. But she’s not here, and I don’t have a lot to work with . . .” He looked up at the light fixtures speculatively.

“We are _not_ dismantling the Guggenheim,” Annabeth told him.

“Sounds like Jason was a lot of help,” said Rachel.

Leo put a hand over his mouth to stifle his laugh. "He found the table," he said. “It was necessary! And, well, you know Jason. He’s really good at what he does, which is hitting things with a stick. But the other thing about Mr. D’s fanclub is if you kill them he visits torments on you. Madness. Eldritch transformations. Tequila hangovers when you haven’t even been drinking tequila.”

Rachel shuddered. It was a convincing shudder. There was clearly a lot more to Clarion Ladies Academy than Annabeth had suspected.

“It can’t be a coincidence they’re here,” said Annabeth, although they’d somehow managed to lose the maenads in the gallery space. It couldn’t last.

Leo shook his head in agreement. “This is really not their usual scene.”

“If they’re not after us--and they haven’t attacked us yet, so probably not--they must be after the same thing we’re after. Apollo’s son’s toy. Which is where, Rachel? Why aren’t we walking?”

“Because this is the end of the path.” Rachel turned around in a circle a couple of times, then stopped, frustrated. “It’s either here, or . . . something is here, anyway.”

“Great. Thanks for all the help, Lord Apollo. Well, let’s look around, maybe the art . . .” Annabeth scowled. It was a crayon drawing, an actual crayon drawing, framed and hung on the wall. “My ten-year-old brothers can draw better than this.”

“Not very impressive, since it was actually drawn by a six-year-old.” Rachel tapped the card next to the drawing. “This is the annual A Year With Children exhibit.”

“What, everything in this room was made by a child? This year?”

“Right,” said Rachel. “It’s like I was telling you, the Guggenheim was founded on the principle that art can serve as--”

“Gods, at least I have ADHD, what’s your excuse?” said Annabeth. “ _Focus_ , Dare. The point is that none of these . . . pieces could possibly have been part of Frank Lloyd Wright’s collection.”

“It’s probably hidden somewhere,” said Leo. “This flooring looks like it would be real easy to--”

“ _Still not_ dismantling the Guggenheim!” Honestly, it was like herding cats. “Okay . . . okay, here’s the plan. Rachel, you go find the maenads. You’re mortal, so they won’t smell you. Follow them, try to figure out what they’re up to. But don’t engage them, okay? If you think they’re on to you, just come straight back here.”

Rachel threw Annabeth a jaunty salute and headed back the way they’d come.

“Leo . . .” Annabeth sighed. “You search this room, see if there’s anywhere that someone might have hidden a magical artifact. But _no dismantling_ until I say so, right?”

“You’re the boss,” Leo agreed. Then he gave her the big brown puppy-dog eyes. “But maybe dismantling later?”

“We’ll see,” said Annabeth. “I’m going to go to the offices, see if I can find any records of something especially valuable being moved here, or something secret . . .” She took her invisibility cap out of her backpack and pulled it on. Leo gave a puzzled blink at the place where she’d just been.

“Um, I don’t think a baseball cap is really much of a disguise,” said Leo.

“What? No, it’s my . . .” Annabeth took the cap off her head and turned it around in her hands, as if it were possible that she’d pulled a different cap out of her backpack by mistake. She hadn’t. “It’s my invisibility cap . . .”

Leo shrugged. “Well, it’s not making you very invisible.”

“No, it does,” Annabeth protested weakly. “It must.”

“How does it work?” Leo plucked the cap out of Annabeth’s limp hands. “Maybe I can fix--”

Annabeth didn’t hear the end of Leo’s sentence--maybe because she couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears, or maybe because her hard shove to his stomach cut the rest of the words off. He stumbled backwards and she clutched her reclaimed cap to her chest. “Don’t _touch_ it,” she snarled. “It’s not a _machine._ It’s my mother’s blessing, and I . . .” The enormity of what had happened was starting to sink in. “I’ve lost it.”

Leo was picking himself up off the floor when Rachel came into view, looking worried. “I’m sorry, guys, but I think--what just happened here?”

“Um . . .” said Leo.

“Well . . .” said Annabeth.

None of them had time for more explanations. Five girls burst into the room, brandishing pinecones on sticks or flexing wicked-looking claws (with Hello Kitty nail art.) “Party!” one shouted.

“Kill the unbeliever!” another screeched.

Leo whimpered. “Oh gods, they remember.”

“No killing?” said Annabeth.

“Tequila hangovers,” said Rachel.

“Forever,” said Leo.

“Right. Plan C, then.” Annabeth grabbed Leo’s hand in one of hers and Rachel’s in the other. “Run.”


	3. Rachel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got a little darker than I was expecting. Sorry anyone who was here for the lighthearted magical adventures?
> 
> Oh and I guess I should warn for violence to animals. It's described kind of obliquely but pretty graphically, if that makes sense, also that's not really what's going on, but . . . there's a thing, be warned?

“We’re going the wrong way!” Rachel wailed.

“No, we’re going away from the monsters, which is always the right way,” said Annabeth as they dodged cafe tables and pelted down a staircase. “Your oracle senses are great and all, but they don’t give a shit about self-preservation.”

Rachel didn’t answer, mostly because keeping up with Annabeth and Leo was taking all the breath she had. They got a lot more practice at this running-away thing than she did. Maybe if she survived and made it back to school she should go in for track.

And also--when she and Annabeth and Percy had been in Daedalus’ labyrinth, Rachel had led them into almost as many traps as she’d saved them from. Annabeth was right. But that did nothing to silence the clamor in Rachel’s head, shouting, _turn back! Turn back!_

It was hard not to listen. Especially since her aching leg muscles and the stitch in her side agreed. _Shut up_ , Rachel thought back. _Or else tell me something useful, like where that blessed artifact is._

A single maenad who’d outpaced her sisters came sliding down the handrail after them, laughing maniacally, claws unsheathed. “No killing,” said Annabeth, “but a little maiming, maybe?”

“Gods, I don’t know!” Leo said. “They didn’t come with a user’s manual!”

“We’ll have to risk it. Keep running, Rachel.” Annabeth drew her knife, blocking the flashing claws that swiped at her face. Leo put his hands on the rail and they flared for a second; in another moment the stairwell was filled with the smell of burning paint and the maenad screamed and fell to the floor.

“Ha! Immune to fire, but not hot metal, huh?”

Rachel reached the landing, doubled over coughing from the fumes, straightened up. “There’s a door next floor down!” she called.

“Yes, good!” Annabeth called back. Rachel could hear two sets of footsteps behind pelting down the stairs at full speed, and the hissing of the snakes in the maenad’s ivy crown, not far behind.

A shriek came from further up the stairwell. _Don’t look back, Rachel. Just keep running._ “Demigods! Where’s our prize?”

“Nono, y’gotta kill them first,” said another voice, lower-pitched and slurred. “It’s like those things, you know the ones . . . filled with candy?”

“Little kids on Halloween?”

“No! Although those are great too. It’s the one . . . you know the one . . . starts with a p . . .”

Annabeth put on a burst of speed and reached the door just before Rachel, the three of them practically fell through it together, and Leo slammed it shut.

Annabeth nodded at him. “Secure that.”

“It’s not gonna hold for long,” he said, but he knelt at the handle and got to work anyway, with a long thin thing like an allen wrench that he’d gotten from his tool belt. Rachel could hear thumps from the other side. The handle rattled to no effect, and then the squeals started, earsplitting like nails on a chalkboard. The maenads were apparently just going to claw their way through a steel door. That wasn’t terrifying at all.

“Here’s where we split up again,” said Annabeth. “Leo, you’re with me. Rachel--”

Because they wouldn’t chase a mortal on her own. And because Rachel couldn’t keep up, couldn’t fight, couldn’t be healed with ambrosia when she got hurt. “Look, I can--”

“No,” said Annabeth. She tossed a drachma to Rachel, who didn’t catch it and had to scoop it up from the floor. “Once you’re clear, call--”

“Argus,” said Leo. “He gave the fan club a ride to Atlantic City last time, he can do it again. And he’s nearby.”

“Right, good thinking. You done there?” Annabeth pulled Leo to his feet, and the two of them were off again, running flat-out. A few other museum patrons looked up for a moment, startled, and then went back to looking at the art. Rachel figured New York must have gotten more than its share of the Mist--what with being the home of the gods and all--the way its residents were determined to ignore not just monsters, but _anything_ that didn’t concern them. It really was the best city on Earth.

And then a clawed hand punched through the door, Hello Kitty’s wide-eyed face not even scratched where it was painted onto one of the nails, and Rachel decided it was time to go. Walk, not run--and what a relief that was--just another mortal soaking up some culture on a Sunday, nothing to see here.

Rachel’s vision was arrested by a large canvas, colorful geometric shapes arranged in a swirl against a black-and-white background. She’d seen it before, on her way in. Damn it to all the frozen corners of the underworld. The minute she’d stopped paying attention, her traitor feet had walked her right back onto the glowing path. She was supposed to be getting out and finding a rainbow, and now--

There was a hand on her shoulder. A sharp hand. A voice she’d last heard comparing demigods to pinatas said, “Turn around, bright eyes.”

Rachel’s shoulder was much softer than a steel door. She turned around, slowly.

“Oh my gods, Phaedra.” Another maenad bumped drunkenly up against the one holding Rachel. She had cat’s-eye glasses with little snakes wrapped around the earpieces, and a familiar shrill voice. “Did you just quote Total Eclipse of the Heart? You’re a worthless piece of trash.”

“What do you want?” said Rachel. If it was to tear her limb from limb, there was no reason for the quiet approach. But expecting reason from maenads--Rachel’s head was starting to reel like she’d just knocked back a shot, just from standing this close to them.

“Toys!” said Phaedra, her eyes shining madly. “The boss promised us toys!”

“Toys are fun,” added a third maenad, the one with the vintage briefcase. Two more were standing on either side of her. They were flexing their claws menacingly, and Rachel mentally dubbed them Itchy and Scratchy. “Build a castle. Smash a castle!”

“The boss?” said Rachel. “You mean . . . Mr. D?” There was, Rachel suddenly remembered, that old feud between Apollo and Dionysus, about who was a better musician. If she’d gotten herself involved in a conflict between gods . . . that could be very dangerous.

_Yeah, you think?_

But Phaedra giggled nastily and shook her head. “We think Lord Dionysus has been,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “avoiding us. But he’ll notice us when the boss’ plan works. Everyone will notice! It will be hard to miss! So you have to come with us.”

The five maenads closed in around Rachel. One would have been enough, with those claws an inch from her throat. But if they were all here then maybe Annabeth and Leo were still loose. Rachel hoped that Annabeth was coming up with a plan; it seemed like hoping was the only thing she could do. She hated feeling like that.

_Next time, I am not leaving camp without my hairbrush._

The maenads herded her towards an elevator and they went down, and down, leaving Rachel’s stomach behind. They were packed so tightly that they all jostled into each other--elbows, claws, hair, butts--and the small space was filled with the smell of fermenting wine, sweat and sex, divine madness and the glory of the living god . . . Rachel swallowed the scream that was rising in her throat. Her fingernails bit into her palms.

_Rational thoughts, think rational thoughts._ What was down here . . . a theater, right? That made sense, for followers of Dionysus, even if they were (Rachel hoped) pursuing their own agenda. The doors slid open and the maenads pushed Rachel out, not gently. Her shirt tore at the shoulder where Phaedra had been holding her, she felt a flare of pain and smelled blood and fell forward onto her hands and knees. A woman came prowling out of the darkness, her graying hair wreathed in ivy and snakes, a goat’s skin not doing much to cover her body. She moved like something not quite human. Rachel struggled to her feet, hoping it would give her the advantage of height, but she could only think of how exposed her throat was.

“Rachel Elizabeth Dare,” purred the woman, “do you know how it feels to tear a man’s head off his shoulders with your hands?”

Rachel backed up a step. One of the maenads pushed her forward again, giggling. “Not . . . not as such, no.”

But she did. Her claws tore through skin and muscle as if they were wet clay, and eyes stared up at her in blank horror, their last expression in life, and she howled in triumph and gloried in her god-granted strength, and it was a lion and it was a man and it was her son . . .

And the Big House was burning, and she flung a body off the point of her spear and urged her troops forward--it was Miranda Gardiner, who’d trailed roses over Rachel’s cave entrance in the spring--and her arms weren’t her own, they were bloody to the elbow, almost obscuring the tattoo that was just like Jason’s, topped with a crossed torch and sword . . .

And there was a metal toy truck in her hand, and she brought it down, over and over

_But this one was real, a real memory, her own_

And blood and bits of skin and fur were flying up into her face and sticking there, washed by tears and snot, and she shook with sobs and she couldn’t stop smashing because what if it wasn’t dead yet

_No stop it_

And there was a scream from high above her, and a face that had only smiled before looking down at her in terror, because she was the monster, Rachel was

_No_

“There, you see?” Rachel snapped back to the present, weak and shaking. The woman was smiling up at her with a lazy leopard’s smile. “Now wouldn’t you like to forget that? And that is why I think we can help each other.”

“Who . . . who are you?” Rachel whispered.

“Agave,” said the woman. “Daughter of Cadmus, mother of Pentheus. Sister to Semele and aunt to Lord Dionysus.”

Rachel snorted a laugh. “Sorry. It’s just--Agave? And you smite people with tequila hangovers?”

“You laugh because you are afraid. That is good,” said Agave. “Terror and joy, creation and destruction, madness and inspiration . . . it is only man’s folly, that he calls wisdom, that separates these things. They are all one in the sight of the god. And you, who have seen the world as it truly is--you serve Apollo. God of pretty couplets and mincing meter, poetry pinned like a butterfly on corkboard.”

“Yeah. I do.” Rachel stood straighter. It was true that Apollo wasn’t likely to swoop down and rescue her. Gods were seldom helpful like that. And still . . . she wasn’t here alone. “I’ll tell him what you said about his poetry, too.”

“He had a son, your Lord Apollo. Orpheus. He sang so sweetly, so prettily, he sang the dead back to life. But he couldn’t keep them like that for long!” Agave cackled. “When he was only a nurseling, his cousin--the goddess Athena--gave him a gift, and charged him to teach men the ways of order and civilization and harmony. And so he did. But we had him in the end--the maenads! We tore his flesh and watered the fields with his blood and tossed his head in the river! His gift should have been ours! But it eluded us, again and again . . . until today. You will deliver it to us.”

“Like hell,” said Rachel. “Your goons grabbed me too soon. I don’t know where it is. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You’re crazy.”

“Yes.” Agave bared her teeth and touched her claws to Rachel’s face. “And are you not? Have you not been told so, by those who could not see what you saw? Would you not like to pull the Mist from men’s eyes, and drown the world in the truths it has no stomach for? We will do that, with Orpheus’ gift.”

“No,” said Rachel.

“A pity,” said Agave. “But you will speak. Hold her, girls.”

The maenads mobbed Rachel again. Her chest tightened and she tried to breathe evenly through her panic. “You know . . . torture is a really unreliable method of extracting information,” Rachel said. When she’d gone to an Amnesty International protest last fall, she’d never thought of the talking points as applying to her. Her voice shook, but she went on. “If you hurt me, I’ll talk, sure, but I’ll just say what I think you want to hear. You won’t be able to trust a word I say.”

“Perhaps!” Agave laughed. “Perhaps we will hurt you anyway, just for fun! But there is a way to compel truth from one like you. An old way. The old ways are best, don’t you think?” She drew a branch from a fold in her goatskin, with dried gray-green leaves clinging to it. It smelled the way the kitchen in Rachel’s house had smelled for a while when they’d had that cook from southern France. Bay leaves. Rachel had hated the taste even then, and now the smell made her retch. Agave reached into her goatskin again, pulled out a lighter, and set the branch on fire.

Rachel tried to back away, but the maenads were holding onto her too tightly. She tried not to breathe. The smoke tickled her nose. Agave was right; she would speak, and speak the truth. She could feel the prophecy growing inside her, and there was no swallowing it back.

_Shining Apollo, help me_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to leave this fact here: in the Useful-Crafts-verse, Rachel didn't have a hamster when she was six. She had a guinea pig. (Her dad got it wrong because he doesn't pay much attention to what he thinks of as irrelevant details.)


	4. Leo

In his defense, Leo was spending most of his energy a) running and b) being scared out of his mind. He’d barely survived Mr. D’s fan club the last time, when he’d been on his home court and they’d been underage maenads. These ones seemed older, more vicious.

But what really freaked him out was remembering how badly he’d wanted to join their party and let himself be ripped apart, that time at Camp Half-Blood. It had seemed like a great idea. It had felt exactly like one of his own crazy, brilliant ideas. And if it happened again, Piper and her charmspeak weren’t here to snap him out of it.

So he didn’t realize what was wrong until Annabeth suddenly stopped running in a room full of television screens mounted on a framework. He almost crashed into her. Then he spent a hopeful second thinking that Annabeth would let him dismantle this--it had a lot of good parts he could probably use. (Even if it was Art and probably worth a bajillion dollars.) But Annabeth said, “They’re not chasing us. This is bad.”

“No, not being chased by monsters is good,” said Leo. “Remember, like you told Rachel . . . oh. Oh, shit.”

“I am such a _fucking idiot!_ ” Annabeth burst out. “It they’re after the artifact, of _course_ they want the oracle. And we just abandoned her to them!”

“Well, but . . . if they want her help, they won’t hurt her, right?”

Annabeth’s mouth twisted in something that wasn’t a smile. “You mean they won’t kill her. Or do anything that permanently affects her ability to talk.”

A series of things that five crazed, super-strong nymphs with razor claws could do to Rachel without killing her or permanently affecting her ability to talk flashed across Leo’s mind. He felt kinda sick. And if Annabeth thought like this all the time . . . no wonder she didn’t put up with mistakes from anyone.

“Hey. She’ll be okay. We’ll get her back.” Not that there was any reason to think so, except that Leo really needed to believe it. And more importantly he really needed Annabeth to believe it. “We’re heroes, aren’t we? It’s what we do; we rescue the girl.”

“She’s not the girl, you asshole. She’s Rachel.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Leo shrugged more cheerfully. Things were going very wrong when Annabeth started calling herself a fucking idiot. If she was back to calling him an asshole, it was easier to believe that it would all work out.

They turned back the way they’d come, still hurrying but not running anymore, keeping their eyes open for any sign of Rachel or the maenads. They didn’t see anything until they got to the door they’d split up by, which was burst outward like someone had set a small and very powerful bomb there. A few curlicues of shredded steel littered the floor. Annabeth picked one up and looked it over as if it could tell her which direction they’d gone.

 _She’ll be okay_ , Leo repeated to himself. It didn’t help much. He was kind of a terrible liar.

They went a bit further, but there were no signs of a fight or anything. And when they reached a junction where one way led back to the rotunda, and more galleries branched off on the other side, Annabeth stopped and shook her head. “This is hopeless. Rachel must have gone quietly--which is good--but there’s no way to follow them. We’ll have to search this whole museum from top to bottom, assuming they’re even still here, or--” her eyebrows drew together in a furious frown of concentration. “We tackle the problem from the other end. We don’t know where the maenads are, but we do have Rachel’s best guess as to where what they’re looking for is. A Year With Children.”

As they headed back to the gallery with the crayon drawings and play-doh sculptures, Annabeth explained, “Even if the artifact isn’t there, the maenads are going to have to check it. And once we find them, we can make them take us to Rachel . . . somehow.” She shook her head doubtfully. “Better case, the artifact is there. We need something to give us an edge.”

They came to the right gallery, and Annabeth sat down on a bench and casually tossed her backpack beside her--or at least it’d look casual to anyone who didn’t know what a deadly array of things Annabeth kept in her backpack, and how quickly she could get at them. Just now, she took out a museum map, and pretended to be engrossed in planning her assault on Art.

“I’ll cover for you if any mortals show up,” said Annabeth, “and when the maenads get here. You find that artifact. If you have to strip this place down to the foundations to do it.”

“Right,” said Leo.

There was no reason to start with tearing up the floors, though. He made a circuit of the gallery, peeking behind the paintings and drawings, opening up the freestanding display cases arranged around the room. None of them contained anything more interesting than light fixtures.

A group of museum-goers came in, and Annabeth got up to intercept them and lead them subtly away from where Leo was inspecting the wiring. He probably couldn’t pass himself off as a particularly short maintenance guy, although if he was an art thief he wouldn’t have been after a friendship bracelet made by Anita Nguyen, age 7.

“The idea is,” Annabeth was saying earnestly, “that art can be a foundation for learning. It’s not that any of these kids will necessarily grow up to be great artists--although some of them might, of course--but that by learning to make and appreciate art, they’re opening themselves up to new ways of looking at the world, and their place in it . . .”

It all sounded very impressive. The group Annabeth was talking to would never guess that she was bullshitting based on one minute’s glance through the brochure that went along with the museum map--and okay, maybe a few years’ friendship with Rachel.

And it wasn’t all bullshit. _Making art . . . place in the world . . ._ there was something important there, but Leo couldn’t quite--

Once she’d hustled them back out of the gallery before their status could change from _people having a nice time at the museum_ to _innocent bystanders_ , Leo said, “Annabeth?”

“Yeah?”

“You know what Rachel was saying, about the museum being a temple . . . there’d be, like, a place to make offerings, right? Like at the dining pavilion back at camp?”

“Sure.”

“Where would it be?”

“If this room was the temple, you mean? The _cella_ , where the image of the god and maybe some relics were kept, would be there, in the east, right.” She pointed at a wall that had nothing more interesting on it than a painting of a snowman. Leo had double-checked. “So the altar would be . . .” She paced between the rows of free-standing display cases, stopped at one in the middle, about chest-height, that held a lopsided clay bowl. “Here. What are you thinking?”

Leo didn’t know how to explain it. He wasn’t really thinking anything, it was more of a feeling. “Well, it’s--I--”

“Never mind,” said Annabeth. She drew her knife and dropped into a crouch, as the sound of maniacal laughter rang out from the gallery’s entrance. “Whatever you’re about to do, Valdez, it had better work.”

“The boss was right!” the lead maenad screeched gleefully. She had two of her sisters behind her--only two, were the other two still with Rachel? “It’s here!”

Annabeth rushed at them, catching the claws of one of them on her knife and pivoting to send her crashing into her sisters, rolling out of the way when the counterattack came. Leo had never really seen Annabeth fight before. She didn’t have the power Jason did, but she was fast; she seemed to know exactly where her enemies were going to strike and be just slightly somewhere else. It was--

She was buying him time. He had to focus. Three eight-inch copper rods and a spool of copper wire, a bit of weaving and a judicious application of heat, and he had a brazier. It wasn’t pretty, but it would work.

Somewhere off to his left, he could hear a maenad shriek, and Annabeth hiss in pain. She was muttering to herself, “Immune to fire, the knife just glances off--hey, Leo! Hate to interrupt, but have you got anything that can do electricity?”

He reached into his tool belt and pulled out a fluorescent lighting tester, which wouldn’t deliver enough of a jolt to do more than startle a maenad, but it was what he could think of. He tossed it in the general direction of Annabeth’s voice. There was a zap and a squeal and . . . he took something else out of his tool belt, something that he’d stashed in there months before and not thought about much since. Something that, like all the other works of art in the gallery, had been made by a child. Only not this year. A lifetime ago.

 _It’s my destiny_ , he’d told his brothers and sisters, spreading out the drawing in front of them at Bunker Nine. If it hadn’t been for the way it had exactly matched the plans drawn up a hundred years before, he might never have convinced them to build the _Argo II_. But the _Argo II_ was real now, bright and beautiful and almost ready to launch--assuming he could get the aerial gyrostabilizers to work right. He didn’t need this anymore.

It was just--everything else Leo and his mom had owned, every single other thing that hadn’t burned or been taken by the police as evidence and never given back, his aunt Rosa had sold or thrown out. Besides his memories (and since last winter he knew just how much those were worth, thank you Tia Callida) there was no other evidence that that those days had actually happened. He only had the drawing at all because the winds had been saving it for him all those years. The thought of destroying it _hurt._

 _Yeah, dummy, that’s why it’s called a sacrifice._ He could almost hear Rachel saying it.

“O goddesses, accept my offering,” Leo whispered. He smoothed the paper on top of the display case and put it into the brazier. Festus’ face smiled back up at him. He touched it, and it burned.

There was the deafening blare of a fire alarm, the hiss and distinctive smell of fire-fighting foam, and the splutter of a maenad who’d just gotten it full in the face. No one had ever accused Annabeth of being slow on the uptake. And in the eastern wall--the one where Annabeth had said the image and relics of the god would be kept, which Leo had double-checked, right next to the painting of a snowman--there was a niche, and in the niche there was a box.

Leo rushed over and grabbed it before anyone else noticed it was there. It was made of olive wood, about the size of a lunchbox, with no decorations but worn smooth and shiny by the touch of many hands. He flipped open the lid, and there were blocks inside. Not like a whole set of building blocks that might actually be fun to play with. Just four. Two cubes, a cylinder, and a sphere. But there was something elegant in the shapes, and the way they related to each other--Leo suddenly realized that he’d been thinking about the aerial gyrostabilizers entirely in the wrong way. It was--the _Argo II_ wasn’t an airplane, it needed something that would respond to the way a living thing balanced, and he knew just where he had seen something like that recently--

He closed the lid of the box and turned around. “I’ve got it,” he said.

The fire alarm was still blaring. One of the maenads was slumped in a corner, looking dazed, and another one was trying to claw fire-fighting foam off of her face. Annabeth was sitting across the chest of the third, her fluorescent lighting tester hovering half-an-inch from the maenad’s right eye. “Okay,” said Annabeth, “we surrender.”

“Huh?” said the maenad she was sitting on.

“Huh?” said Leo.

There was a feral smile on Annabeth’s face, and a gleam in her eye. “Please don’t hurt us,” she said. “We’ll do whatever you want. Provided that what you want is to take us and this artifact to your boss. And that is what you want, isn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will explain Orpheus' Gift more fully later, I hope, but in the meantime if you want a picture it looks a little like this:


	5. Annabeth

“Gimme the toys,” said one of the maenads, through a mouthful of fire-fighting foam.

The one in the corner pulled herself upright. “No! I want them!”

Ordinarily Annabeth would have liked nothing better than to encourage monsters to fight amongst themselves. But if they were fighting, they weren’t taking Annabeth and Leo to Rachel. “Why don’t we let Leo keep them for now?” she suggested. “It’ll save argument, and it’s not like he’s a threat.” She gave him a sidelong smirk to answer his _fuck-you-very-much_ expression, but it wasn’t on his face like she’d expected. He just looked . . . abstracted.

Maybe the artifact was affecting his mind. Maybe they _should_ let the maenads have it. It was worth keeping in mind for a backup plan, anyway, but for now--since Leo didn’t seem to be actually hurt--Annabeth liked the balance of power better the way it was.

“You say he isn’t a threat,” said the maenad Annabeth was sitting on, who seemed marginally smarter than the others, “but he trapped Babette and her band last winter.”

“Oh, those losers.” The first maenad flicked the last of the foam off her face and started cleaning her glasses. “Can’t even hold their guggeleh,” she hiccuped, “muggeleh,” another hiccup, “can’t hold their eggnog worth shit.”

Annabeth rolled her eyes. “I know, right? You are so much better than those guys. Which is why you don’t have to worry about Leo.”

“Fine,” said the maenad Annabeth was sitting on. Annabeth slid off her chest. “First we’ll go to the boss. Then play with toys. But remember that you’re our prisoners, demigods! If you try any tricks, we know tricks too.”

“I can do the one where you saw a woman in half!” said the third maenad, wobbling a bit as she stepped away from the wall. “That one’s great.”

“It’s not that great,” said Leo vaguely. “They just use mirrors.”

She gave him a smile full of pointy teeth. “Not the way I do it.”

The maenads shepherded Annabeth and Leo towards an elevator as the fire alarm gave one last wail and died. An elevator full of one teenage boy who spent most of his time in a machine shop, three drunken nature spirits, and Annabeth herself--who hadn’t actually taken time to shower after her workout that morning, not to mention the fight just now--did not smell great. But it was better than the smell that hit when the doors slid open. Rotting vegetation, too-heavy air, musk like some sort of hunting animal had been marking its territory all over the place, and the fumes of fermenting grapes hanging over it all. The place they’d come out in was so thick with trees and vines that Annabeth couldn’t tell if there was a ceiling overhead or the sky. Even after Olympus and the Labyrinth and everything she’d seen, there was a moment of shock: _this is what’s underneath the Guggenheim?_

“Boss!” shouted the lead maenad. “We got the toys! And some demigods for an appetizer or something.”

Annabeth gripped the zappy stick Leo had given her more tightly. It chose that moment to disappear. “Uh, Leo?” said Annabeth, showing him her empty hand. “The stuff from your tool belt . . .”

“Oh, yeah, it’ll do that,” he said. “If you’re not using it, and you haven’t incorporated it into a more permanent structure. But if you need another one, I can--”

There was a rustle and crash and something burst from the undergrowth. But it wasn’t the maenads’ boss, whoever that was. It was Rachel. Her shirt was shredded at the shoulder and soaked with blood, her face was tear-stained, and she let out a sob when she saw Annabeth and Leo. “Oh, thank the gods,” she said, stumbling towards them. “You guys have to get me out of here.”

“That’s the plan.” Annabeth’s own voice gave a wobble, and she was torn between relief at finding Rachel mostly okay and the need to rip apart whoever had done this to her with her bare hands. _That’s the maenads’ frenzy; it’s contagious_ , Annabeth told herself, but it wasn’t that simple. There was something in her that kindled to the maenads’ madness, and these days it wasn’t buried as deep as it used to be.

“You surrendered! But you were lying! That’s adorable!” the maenad with the cat’s-eye glasses giggled. The others started to close in, and Annabeth slid between them and Rachel. The path to the elevator was still clear, if they could get there first without being cut to ribbons.

Another form was prowling through the forest behind the maenads. It was hard to make out; it seemed to draw the darkness around it. It wasn’t a leopard, though that was how it looked for a moment. It was a woman. The maenads’ boss.

“And now we will play with toys,” she said.

“Yeah, no,” said Annabeth. “Leo, Rachel--” But before Annabeth could give the word to run, Rachel tripped, caught herself on the branch of a tree--and then the branch was in her hands, and she swung it and it connected with the back of Leo’s skull faster than either he or Annabeth could react. Rachel grabbed up the box with the artifact in it as Leo crumpled to the forest floor.

“Back off, Wise Girl.” Rachel’s eyes glowed faintly green, with prophecy or frenzy, and she wasn’t clumsy now--she moved like the maenads’ boss, sinuous and close to the ground. And she used Percy’s nickname for Annabeth, which she never had. If it were Percy, Annabeth would have backed off, no questions. But Rachel--

While Annabeth was hesitating, Rachel took off. “Orpheus’ Gift, Agave,” she said, crouching in front of the woman and holding up the box.

“I knew you would see things my way!” the woman--Agave?--crowed. “Did you not tell me so yourself? _A turncoat’s strike, unseen and swift / Restores the singer’s rightful gift._ ” Annabeth recognized the cadence of one of Rachel’s prophecies. Had she betrayed them for no other reason than that she’d foretold she would? That made no sense.

Agave took the box from Rachel, flipped up the lid and frowned. “It is different than I remember it . . . and yet . . .”

“The appearance of things is changeable,” said Rachel. “But their true nature isn’t. Look closer, and see.” She took something out of the box--it was a cube a bit smaller than the palm of her hand, like a building block. Agave took out another like it, holding it close to her face and turning it around and around.

“Yessss,” she hissed. “I see.”

Annabeth sure as hell didn’t. But she heard rustling by her feet; Leo was stirring and groaning softly, and there was something she could do, anyway. The maenads were all clustered around Agave and Rachel, chattering about toys. They didn’t pay any attention to Annabeth as she knelt, got a flask of nectar out of her backpack, and trickled some into Leo’s mouth.

“. . . Annabeth?” he mumbled. “I had this great idea . . . for reconfiguring the _Argo II_ ’s catapults so they shoot ice cream . . .”

She gave him a little more, and he licked his lips, sat up unsteadily, and said, “Actually, that’s a really dumb idea, isn’t it.”

“I dunno,” said Annabeth, putting the flask away and squeezing his shoulders in a quick hug. “I saw Thalia kill a sphinx with a Sara Lee danish once.”

Leo shook his head, then winced like that had been a mistake. “Rachel--she--”

And then things started to get weird. A lot of demigods tended to think of the Mist as something that only affected mortals, but Annabeth knew better. She was used to seeing both sides, to looking at Tyson and seeing either a Cyclops or an big ungainly kid depending on where they were and how close she was paying attention, to looking up at the Empire State Building and having to squint to see the mountain there and not blue sky.

What she wasn’t used to was seeing everything at once. She was in a forest, and also in a round theater with rows of comfy beige chairs that were towering oaks hung with garlands of ivy. It wasn’t like a transparent overlay, it was much more disconcerting than that.

Agave and Rachel faced each other on the stage--in a clearing--and Agave’s lips pulled back from leopard’s teeth in a wild laugh. “It is working! The Mist is dissolving! The world is learning the madness of the god!”

The Mist dissolving . . . everywhere? One corner of Annabeth’s mind couldn’t help picturing her father’s apartment in San Francisco doubled like this, monsters from the depths of Tartarus crawling out of the oven when her stepmother opened it to take out a batch of cookies . . . _tell me there are no spiders now._ But this was bad. She had to do something, if only she could tell where her hands were.

“Leo, could you--” she started, but her voice sounded strange and distorted, and when she looked over where Leo was--or more specifically, where his tool belt was--she almost threw up. She’d known theoretically that there had to be some kind of folded space there for it to do what it did, but she’d never tried to visualize it. Only now she couldn’t help it.

“Orpheus’ Gift is meant for teaching, isn’t that what you told me?” said Rachel. “The ways of order and civilization and harmony. And mutual understanding. I saw things your way, Agave. Now you’re seeing things mine. Is this what you wanted?”

Agave’s laugh had turned into a scream. The weirdness seemed to be spreading in ripples outward from where she and Rachel were standing, which was good, because that meant . . . something. It was getting harder to think logically.

“This isn’t fun,” whimpered the lead maenad. Annabeth had thought from the start she was a little smarter than the others.

Beneath Rachel’s skin, filling the outlines of her body, she was a mass of writhing snakes, twisting together, biting each other, and when Annabeth looked down at her own hands she saw nothing but stormclouds.

“This isn’t _fun!_ ” the maenad screeched. Through the trees and theater seats and component molecules of the universe, she was a blur of motion, too fast for the eye to quite follow as she struck the cube out of Agave’s hand.

Something happened. The theater and the forest came apart. The forest went one way, taking Agave and the maenads with it, and the theater and Annabeth and Leo and Rachel went another. And Annabeth understood how it worked. She couldn’t have described it with words or with numbers, but in that moment of insight, if she’d had a pencil in her hand and a sketchbook--she thought she could have drawn it.

And then the moment passed. Annabeth and Leo were sprawled in the aisle of a theater. Rachel knelt on the stage, breathing hard, surrounded by shards of glass from a broken floodlight and a few scattered building blocks. She picked up the blocks and put them back into their box, then jumped off the stage, climbing over upended chairs with their legs bent and seats torn, over to Annabeth and Leo.

“Leo, I’m _so sorry_ ,” she said. “I didn’t want to--but I had to make it convincing--and I’d never hit anyone with a club before, I didn’t think it would work so well, oh gods, are you okay?”

Leo rubbed the back of his head. “It’s cool. Nectar means never having to say you have a concussion.”

Rachel’s skin was pale, even paler than usual. She was shaking, and when Annabeth put a hand on her arm, it was ice cold. She hadn’t been faking her terror when Annabeth and Leo had first showed up. She just hadn’t let it control her; she’d used it. “Rachel, you did great, okay?” said Annabeth. “You were awesome. And it’s not like you did anything to Leo that the rest of us haven’t wanted to do on occasion.”

“Your mom’s wanted to do me on occasion,” Leo muttered. It was a sign of how preoccupied Athena was that he wasn’t immediately divebombed by a flock of angry owls. Annabeth was glad to see that Orpheus’ Gift hadn’t permanently damaged his brain, anyway.

“Here, let me look at your shoulder,” Annabeth said to Rachel. She came up with some alcohol and gauze pads and medical tape out of her backpack, which may not have been quite as cool as Leo’s tool belt, but she still managed to keep a lot of useful stuff in it without any need for terrifying non-euclidean geometry. Rachel sat down sideways in a chair and gripped the armrest tightly as Annabeth dabbed at her cut.

“Fuck! That really hurts.”

“Next time don’t let them hit you,” said Annabeth, taping the gauze pads into place. “You should get Will to put a couple of stitches in when we get back to camp, but that'll hold for now. The shirt’s a loss, though. You know, they’ll give you a new one for free at the camp store if you ruin one on a quest.”

“I’ve got the paint splotches just how I like them, though.” Rachel pulled at the jagged hem of her shirt and frowned. “Maybe I’ll sew a patch onto the shoulder. Bloodstains are totally metal, right?”

Back at the other end of the theater, the elevator chimed. The doors slid open and Annabeth saw a familiar figure, the flash of a gold nose stud. “Shit, it’s that docent. We’d better get out of here before she--”

“Nicole?” said Rachel. “Don’t worry, she’s not gonna freak out. Are you, my lady?”

It was true. Nicole just set one of the chairs close to them upright, and somehow managed to make it look like a throne by sitting down in it. “Wait,” said Annabeth. “Nicole is a goddess?”

“A minor one, yeah,” said Rachel. It occurred to Annabeth that if she was it was a bad idea to sit here talking as if she weren’t there. But she didn’t seem any more upset by that than by the state of the theater. She was watching Rachel, interested and kind of amused, waiting to see what she’d say. “I’ve never known which. She’s been here since I first came to the Guggenheim, changing names and faces every couple of years. It was just one of those things I saw that didn’t make any sense until I met Percy, you know? And once I figured things out it didn’t seem polite to ask. Speaking of which, it wasn’t very nice of you to tease Leo, Nicole.”

“But I wasn’t!” said the goddess. “Not much, anyway. I really was very interested to meet him. For reasons that should have become apparent.”

“Oh, yeah, this.” Leo held out the box with Orpheus’ Gift to the goddess. “Do you want it back?”

“Good heavens, no; it was never meant for gods. You’re stuck with it, I’m afraid. Do you know what it is?”

“It makes you look at things in a different way,” said Leo hesitantly. “You see . . . connections you hadn’t seen before, different approaches to solving a problem.”

“Agave said it was Athena’s baby gift to Orpheus,” Rachel added. “He was supposed to use it to teach mankind. But she also said it looks different than it used to?”

“Their current form was devised by a man named Friedrich Fröbel,” said the goddess. “He was a mortal like you, Rachel, and a friend of the wild, and he had a strong vision, a strong belief in the ability of children to learn from their environment and to shape it. A worthy guardian of Orpheus’ Gift. He manufactured copies of it, and his “children’s delight” became the first set of building blocks--but that’s the original,” she went on, tapping a finger on the box Leo held. “Frank Lloyd Wright had it as a child, spent hours with it. He wrote, afterwards, that the blocks stayed in his fingers all his life. He was a lonely child, and usually played by himself--but Orpheus’ Gift is more powerful, as you saw, when there are two sets of hands playing with it, two minds sparking ideas off each other. More powerful, and correspondingly more dangerous.”

“Would it have worked?” said Annabeth. “If that one maenad hadn’t broken the connection--could Agave and Rachel really have dispelled the Mist?”

“Could and did,” said the goddess. “It was a brief, localized effect, but everyone in a five-block radius has just lost between thirty seconds and two minutes of their lives they’ll never miss. There were a few minor injuries, and,” she nodded at the disarray in the theater, “some property damage, which is now being attributed to a little earthquake.”

“Right.” Annabeth’s hand twitched near her thigh, and she swallowed down a flare of anger. Or not quite swallowed. “I’ve got to ask--given that the situation was potentially so disastrous, why the--why didn’t you do anything?”

“The three of you were perfectly capable of handling it!” said the goddess. “And I did have a reason, beyond the standard ones. Gods can be pretty touchy about other gods using their temples. You remember Medusa.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth admitted. She’d dreamed the night before about Percy being chased by gorgons, and she’d really rather not have been reminded that their existence was a result of her mom’s ongoing feud with his dad. If there was a goddess of uncomfortable facts, Annabeth was willing to bet she was talking with her.

“Well,” said the goddess. “My daughters tolerate my presence in their temple, but manifesting my powers would be pushing it.”

“Your daughters?” said Rachel. “The Muses?”

“Mnemosyne,” said Annabeth. “Goddess of memory.”

When her name was spoken, Mnemosyne looked . . . more solid. Her eyes were brighter, and her skin shone with a dark luster. “Yes, well done. I’m pleased to meet you all. And Leo--I understand that when you’ve got a part that’s proven unreliable, you don’t want to incorporate it into your designs.”

Leo seemed to understand this sudden change of subject, even if Annabeth didn’t. He’d gone back to paper clips, hooking one into another as he avoided the goddess’ eyes. “It’s nothing personal against you. It’s just sound practice.”

“I’m not offended,” said Mnemosyne. “Have you got an 8-inch flat file?”

“Sure,” said Leo, pulling one out of his tool belt.

“Here’s the thing, though,” said Mnemosyne. “How do you know that’s an 8-inch flat file?”

Leo looked at the tool in his hand like it might bite him. “But--”

“Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Mnemosyne stood up. “I’m going to go report that the earthquake’s done a number on this theater. And then I’ve got a tour group to lead at one-thirty.”

She headed back to the elevator. “Wait!” Annabeth called, jogging after her. The goddess turned, and Annabeth lowered her voice. Rachel and Leo were still sitting where she’d left them. They were her friends, but this was private. “Lady Mnemosyne, will you help my mother? Please?”

“I know how hard it is for you to humble yourself before the gods, Annabeth Chase,” said Mnemosyne. “I accept your offering, and I’ll do what I can. But the problem is bigger than me. And it’s going to get worse if you and your friends continue on the course you’re set on. Do you understand?”

Admitting she didn't know something was also hard for Annabeth to do. “No.”

“You will,” said Mnemosyne. “You’re clever. And you’ve also been given a tool for seeing.”

Annabeth slipped her hand into her pocket and fingered the coin there. She’d only thought of it as a curse, a sign of her mother’s disfavor, a riddle she couldn’t answer and a test she couldn’t pass. But if it was a tool . . .

Mnemosyne shook her head. “We gods don’t like humbling ourselves before men--or women--either. But you’re carrying the fate of all of us in your pocket. Use it wisely . . . please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A guggeleh-muggeleh is, approximately, Yiddish for eggnog. Also a funny word.


	6. Rachel, four days later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this story got jossed! But only a little bit. Absolutely no spoilers for Blood of Olympus; this thing unfolds exactly as I'd planned before I read it, as it turns out.

It was the first time Rachel had picked up a paintbrush that summer. She’d almost refused the honor--Annabeth had been right in guessing that she was afraid she’d start painting scenes of death and destruction, and it seemed like a shame to do that to Leo’s beautiful ship. But in the end she only painted what she’d meant to paint: the letters _ARGO II_ , each almost as tall as herself, along the ship’s curving prow.

It might have been a prophecy, in a way. Hercules had sailed on the first Argo, and Jason, and Orpheus--none of them had come to particularly happy ends, but they’d succeeded in their quest, and none of them had died on it as far as Rachel knew. So all in all it was probably the best omen they could hope for.

She was just finishing the top crossbar on the _II_ when she heard voices below. She leaned out over the rail of the scaffolding she was standing on, and saw that the ship’s crew had just come out of a hatch. Annabeth, Piper, Leo, and Jason, with Coach Hedge trailing behind them, his club over his shoulder and his eyes darting into every shadow hopefully, looking for something to hit. It seemed that Leo had been giving the rest of them a tour of the ship; he was explaining something with wide hand gestures, but he broke off when he saw Rachel.

“Rachel!” he called up. “Paint job done?”

“The Apollo cabin finished the hull this morning,” she said. “And, well--” she pointed with her thumb over her shoulder at the name she’d just painted, gleaming in black and bronze under Bunker Nine’s floodlights.

“It’s still not too late to do the giant smiley face on the bottom, though,” he said.

“No,” said Annabeth.

“Yeah, the thing is, not all Romans have a real great sense of humor,” said Jason. After a beat, he added, “I mean, not like me.”

Leo laughed. “Damn it, Grace! You’re supposed to be the straight man! You can’t go stepping on my punchlines like that.”

Jason stuck his hands in his pockets and looked smug. Piper reached up and ruffled his hair. Then she ruffled Leo’s, who made a face like a kid whose mom had just cleaned his face with spit.

“Yeah, so, aside from that, and getting the rest of this scaffolding down . . . she’s ready to go now.” Leo bounced a little on the balls of his feet. “We could go now?”

Everyone looked at Annabeth. Not only did she have the most experience, she was the one who’d been pushing hardest all summer, for reasons they could all understand.

“Uh-huh,” said Annabeth. “Leo--when was the last time you slept?”

“What day is today?” said Leo.

“Thursday,” said Piper.

“June 24th,” added Jason helpfully.

“So, uh . . .” Leo counted on his fingers. “Tuesday? Probably. Why?”

Annabeth snorted. “Like I’m getting into any vehicle with you behind the wheel. Or . . . the whatever. Go get some sleep. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

For a minute it looked like Leo was going to argue, but even in the manic mood he was in it seemed like he realized how useless arguing with Annabeth was. “Right. Uh, Rachel.” His feet fidgeted, and he looked anywhere but at her, and his hand went to his tool belt like he was going to take something out of it, but he stopped himself. “If you’re done here, will you come with me? There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Good idea,” said Piper. “Hey Rachel, do me a favor and take this boy back to Cabin Nine, and make sure he gets into his bed and _stays there._ ”

“I like the way you think, Pipes.” Leo grinned up at Rachel. “You could sit on me if you had to. It might not help so much with the sleeping thing, but--”

Annabeth smacked him upside the head, and Piper laughed. Jason shook his head. “Leo, if you don’t learn to watch your mouth you’re going to have the gods lining up to see who gets to reduce you to a pile of smoking ashes first.”

Leo raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, I get it, hands off the sacred oracle. Sorry,” he added to Rachel. It sounded . . . surprisingly sincere.

“It’s cool,” said Rachel, climbing down from the scaffolding. It still hurt her shoulder to do that, and she jumped the last couple of feet. “I’m not really in a position to criticize anyone for running their mouth when they’re nervous. Maybe run it in a different direction than creeping on girls who aren’t interested, though? Whether or not they have scary patron gods who insist on their continued celibacy? I don’t know, it’s just an idea, you could try it out and see how it works for you.”

Now Leo was wearing the slightly stunned look that people sometimes got after Rachel had been talking to them for a bit. She kept going towards Bunker Nine’s front door, and it took him a few seconds to remember to go with her. “So, what’s up?” she said.

“Um,” said Leo. This time he really did get something out of his tool belt; a long screw with a wing nut that he spun around it while he talked. “Thanks for the game controllers; they were exactly what I needed to make the aerial gyrostabilizers work. Are you sure Apollo’s not gonna mind?”

“Nah, the gifts of the gods are meant to be shared,” said Rachel. They were walking through the forest now, and it was a beautiful afternoon; not too hot, and the light getting toward sunset-colored filtering down through the trees.

“So, yeah, about that,” said Leo. “You know how the head counselor of the Hephaestus cabin is traditionally in charge of the arts and crafts program? Which is going to be Jake again after I leave, not that it ever really stopped.”

Rachel shrugged. “Hey, you’ve been busy.”

“I know! That’s what I keep saying! But maybe--anyway, the point is that it’s a lot of work that Jake never really wanted in the first place, and also. I was thinking, um. That maybe the arts and crafts program deserves better--I mean the campers deserve--I mean, better than someone who thinks of teaching arts and crafts as an annoying distraction from working on their own projects. Which is, well. All of us. In Cabin Nine.”

Rachel waited for Leo to go on. It took a minute of spinning the wing nut around on its screw before he was ready. “So I was thinking . . . you’ve got, like, a background in arts education, right? So assuming it’s okay with Chiron . . . would you be willing to do it?”

It was true, Rachel could probably come up with a better art curriculum than Camp Half-Blood had now in her sleep. Less emphasis on making magical weapons. Not that magical weapons weren’t important, if half her visions came to pass the camp was going to need them, but . . . “I dunno,” she said slowly. “I’m going to have to go back to school in the fall; I promised my folks. It was kind of the condition for them letting me come to camp in the first place.”

“Yeah, but you could come down like on weekends. You could totally sell it as a volunteer thing.” Leo did a high voice with what he probably thought was a fancy East Coast accent. “ _It’s this camp for kids with special needs . . ._ ”

Rachel laughed. “You saying you want to be my charity case, Valdez?”

“Well.” Leo shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, right?”

“Right,” said Rachel. They were almost at the Hephaestus cabin, she had to give him an answer. “So here’s the deal. I’ll take over your arts and crafts program--if you teach once a week.”

“What?” Leo squeaked. “No, I’ve got to go save the world--”

“After you get back.”

“ _If_ I get back.”

“Whatever,” said Rachel. “I can start now, you start whenever, but I want your agreement first.”

Leo shook his head helplessly. “I make stuff. I don’t teach. I--every teacher I’ve ever had would shit themselves laughing.”

“Maybe,” said Rachel, “but the Muses revealed Orpheus’ Gift to you.”

“But that was just--I mean I just happened to--” Leo sputtered to a stop, blushing like a particularly rich shade of unfired clay.

He never had told Rachel exactly how he’d found Orpheus’ Gift. When she’d asked, he’d muttered something about how it was really technical and she probably wouldn’t understand. Which she would have bought, if it weren’t for the fact that when something was really technical Leo just went ahead and said it in the cheerful expectation that you _would_ understand.

That was something he’d have to work on when he started teaching.

“That’s my price,” said Rachel. “Take it or leave it.”

“Eh,” said Leo. “I’m probably going to die horribly anyway, so it’s not like I’m actually risking anything, right? You’ve got a deal.”

“Great!” Rachel grinned. Jake Mason was sitting out in front of the Hephaestus cabin, a sword across his knees while he tinkered with a control panel in the hilt. “Hey, Jake, Leo’s had an idea that should save you some work while he’s gone, I have to talk about it with Chiron first, but I think you’re going to like it.”

“Uh . . . okay?” Jake blinked, slightly stunned.

“And also! There’s a favor you can do for Piper, she specifically asked for it.” Rachel didn’t say that Piper’d specifically asked _Jake_ , but his stunned look was overlaid with a goofy grin anyway. “Make sure Leo gets into bed and stays there. He hasn’t slept since Tuesday.”

“Sure,” said Jake, a little more gleefully than was maybe necessary.

Rachel headed back towards the forest and her cave, calling over her shoulder, “Sit on him if you have to!”

“Hey!” shouted Leo, but the rest of his protests were lost as Jake bundled him inside and the cabin door slammed shut behind them.

Rachel came down to dinner about an hour later and Leo wasn’t there, so whatever Jake had done must have worked. She sat with Jason--usually she’d sit at the Apollo table, or Athena, when she wanted to continue a conversation she’d been having with Annabeth, but the past couple of weeks at camp she’d sat with Jason a lot because nobody else was allowed to. He was nice, but he wasn’t the type to run his mouth when he was nervous, so there wasn’t much conversation that night. He spent half the time sort of staring into space with an intense, focused look on his face, as if he could defeat Gaea with the power of his mind if he planned it out carefully enough. The other half he was looking over at the Aphrodite table, waiting for Piper to glance up from her siblings and give him a smile and sort of encouraging wave.

Some of the rules at camp were pretty dumb. Luckily, Rachel didn’t have to follow most of them. Which was why when the other campers headed for the campfire after dinner, she went back to her cave to work on her latest sculpture.

She’d told Annabeth it was an abstract piece, and it had started out that way; she’d been intrigued by the shape of a piece of fallen deadwood she’d found in the forest. But as she worked on it, it had begun to take on a definite form, the bits of broken glass she’d glued along its length standing out like an artery, the wires wrapped around the twig-ends glinting like claws . . .

There was a hand on the curtain of her cave, and Annabeth ducked under the low doorway. “Hey, I was wondering . . . that’s a real creepy landscape you’ve made there.”

“Landscape?” said Rachel.

“Yeah, what did you think it was? Those are hills, and that river . . .” Annabeth crossed her arms and shuddered. “In this light, it looks like it’s on fire.”

“Huh, I thought it was an arm.”

“The appearance of things is changeable, but their true nature isn’t,” said Annabeth. “Isn’t that what you told Agave? I wonder if Orpheus’ Gift used to be a lyre. Four strings, four building blocks, but the mathematical principles, the harmonic ratios, are the same . . .”

“If you say so.” Rachel shrugged. Math had never been her best subject.

“Yeah, so anyway,” said Annabeth. “Everyone back at the Athena cabin is really keyed up. This is the biggest quest that’s been sent out from Camp Half-Blood in, well, ever. The Titan War was a different sort of thing. I doubt anyone’s going to sleep. But I’ve got a quest to lead, and . . . can I stay here tonight?”

“Well, I’ve only got the one bed. But if you don’t mind, it’s a pretty big bed.”

“Sure, that’s fi--wait.” Annabeth scowled. “Is Apollo--I mean, do you two ever--”

Rachel’s face felt like it was on fire, and she waved her hand like she was blocking a punch. “No, oh gods, it’s not like that.”

“Good.” Annabeth sat down on the bed with a huge sigh, then bent over and started unlacing her boots. “I’m just gonna crash now, if that’s okay.”

“Give me a few minutes to put all this stuff away and I’ll join you,” said Rachel. “Do you hog the blankets?”

“Dunno, never tried.” Annabeth apparently slept in her t-shirt and underpants; once she’d taken off her shorts and unhooked her bra from under her shirt, she turned over and was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Rachel put her glue gun and wire spools and stuff back into their cabinet, changed into pajamas, put out the lights and tried to get into bed without waking Annabeth. Demigod battle reflexes made that kind of impossible, though. Rachel just twitched the blanket aside and Annabeth sat bolt upright, eyes wide and jittery.

“Sorry,” said Rachel.

“‘Sokay,” said Annabeth. “I wasn’t asleep.”

“Uh-huh,” said Rachel. “Look, are you sure this is going to work? I could make you, like, a blanket nest or something?”

“It’s fine.” Annabeth flopped back down onto the bed. “Just pre-quest nerves, I guess.”

Rachel spooned up behind her and pulled the blanket over both of them. “Well, don’t worry so much. At least you don’t have to take an out-of-shape, airheaded mortal along this time, right?”

“Yeah, just a psycho goat,” said Annabeth. “I’ll never complain about Grover again. And don’t knock yourself. I told you, you did great. If it had been me, I could never have--what was Agave’s deal, anyway?”

“I’ve been reading up,” said Rachel. “Apparently when Dionysus’ mom Semele was pregnant with him, her sisters--including Agave--started spreading this rumor that the father was some random dude and not Zeus at all. Which, among other things, led Semele to demand to see Zeus in his true divine form, which, you can imagine how that turned out. Zap, pile of dust. After that things got a little--well, if anyone starts giving you trouble about how you were born you can just refer them to Mr. D? Anyway. Point is, after he got all god-ified, he came back home and kind of. Made Agave kill her own son. He inspired her with divine madness and she thought her son was a lion, and she ripped his head off with her bare hands.”

“Gods.” Rachel wasn’t sure whether Annabeth was cussing or blaspheming. “And she’s his worshipper? I would hate him. Why doesn’t she hate him?”

“Oh, she does,” said Rachel. “But hate can be a kind of worship. A kind of ecstasy. It takes you out of yourself, and in her own right mind is the last place Agave wants to be. I get that.” Rachel’s arm tightened across Annabeth’s shoulders. “Can I tell you something? Something I’ve never told anyone?”

“Sure,” said Annabeth.

“When I was little, my parents got me . . .” This was hard to say. But Annabeth was curled up against Rachel, and listening; she wasn’t alone. And now that she’d started there was no backing out. “A guinea pig,” Rachel finished. “I wanted a puppy, but they wanted to start small, see if I could be responsible, I mean whatever, they could have hired two full-time dog-walkers if they wanted, but they were trying to do the parent thing, so they got me a guinea pig. Only it wasn’t. It wasn’t a guinea pig.”

“Oh, no.” Annabeth laughed, smothered it quickly. “I’m sorry. It’s really not funny. It’s just I met your parents’ guinea pig supplier once, she had this resort . . . it doesn’t matter. Go on.”

“It . . . there was this man with tangled hair and a long beard, in this little cage in my room, and he’d mutter to himself about all the awful stuff he was going to do when he got free, and he . . . oh gods, he figured out that I could hear him and he just . . .” Rachel was shaking all over. Annabeth grabbed her hand and squeezed. “He’d describe what he was going to do to me, and I, I listened to it for like a day and a half, and I just couldn’t. I took the top off the cage and beat him to death with one of my toy trucks. My nanny, Maricel, came in while I was doing it, and she . . . it was the last time I ever saw Maricel. In retrospect my folks must have given her a real generous severance package to stop her from talking to the tabloids.”

“That’s horrible,” said Annabeth. “How old were you?”

“Six,” said Rachel. “I went to a therapist a couple of times afterwards, but . . . well, there’s a word for little kids who kill their pets because they hear voices. And my dad didn’t want to hear it. And my dad is _Robert Dare_. And I learned to hide it better, when I saw weird stuff, so that people wouldn’t scream, and, and disappear, and eventually it just became this funny family story, like, remember the time we took Rachel to a psychiatrist to help her get over the death of her hamster. I don’t know if that was the Mist working really slowly, or just my folks not wanting to deal with stuff.”

Annabeth was still holding Rachel’s hand. “Gods. I’m sorry you had to go through that. But, listen, Rachel, they’re real, the things you see. You know that now. You’re not really . . .”

“Schizophrenic?” Rachel said. “Well, I don’t know. You’re really a demigod with battle reflexes, does that mean you don’t really have ADHD?”

Annabeth shook her head. Her hair tickled Rachel’s nose. “That’s different.”

“Is it? I don’t know, I really don’t. Maybe I should see a therapist, but even if I could find one who wouldn’t just say what my dad wanted to hear, where would I find one who’d believe me and understand about the whole oracle thing?”

“A lot of Apollo’s kids become doctors. The ones that survive long enough to get through med school,” said Annabeth. “Maybe Chiron knows someone?”

“That’s . . . a reasonable idea,” said Rachel. Trust Annabeth to take the big, scary fact of Rachel’s life and reduce it to a manageable problem. “I guess I will. Thanks for listening to me.”

“No problem. Now are you going to let me go to sleep, Dare, or what?”

Rachel smiled and didn’t say anything. After a few seconds, Annabeth started snoring, but she didn’t let go of Rachel’s hand. It didn’t take long after that for Rachel to fall asleep herself.

The _Argo II_ sailed the next morning, taking all the hopes of Camp Half-Blood with it. Camp was a sort of washed-out place with Annabeth gone, and Piper and Leo and Jason. It wasn’t the most auspicious time for Rachel to teach her first art class. But it was fun. There was a clay fight.

Afterwards, she went back to her cave to clean up and started fixing herself a cup of tea, and turned away quickly when she saw a bright glow beginning to grow in one corner. It times of crisis it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to the oracle.

“Hey there, Slayer of Mice,” she said, shielding her eyes with a hand.

“Aw, man,” said Apollo. His voice was regular human-sized, and Rachel risked a peek between her fingers. “If you’re going to be reviving Homeric epithets for me, why not the cool ones? I always liked _unshorn_. It refers to my eternally youthful appearance.”

Rachel snickered. “Yeah, well, now _uncut_ refers to something else. Which I’m sure you are, being an ancient Greek and all, but it’s not something you want to go around bragging about. Or maybe it is, I don’t know, but not to your seventeen-year-old maiden oracle? That’s just weird.”

“Hey.” Apollo flung himself down on one of Rachel’s beanbags, but the look on his face wasn’t as aggressively relaxed as his posture. “They’ll be okay.”

Rachel had been running her mouth a little, hadn’t she. It didn’t take a god to figure out what she was worried about. “Yeah? Is that the god of prophecy talking?”

“No, it’s the guy who’s trying to cheer you up talking. _I speak not from mine art, but as I see—blind words and a blind heart!_ ”

“Everyone’s always down on your poetry,” said Rachel, “but that wasn’t bad.”

“Who’s been insulting my poetry? I’ll smite them. That wasn’t me, though, that was Euripides. Or Gilbert Murray’s translation of Euripides, close enough.” Apollo sighed. “Speaking as the god of prophecy, all I can tell you is that they’ll succeed in their quest, in which case they’ll be the greatest heroes in millennia, or else they’ll fail, and none of us will be around long enough for it to matter.”

Rachel rattled her teacups aggressively. “They’re already heroes. I want them _back_.”

“Yeah, well,” said Apollo.

“Thanks for being honest with me, anyway.” Rachel handed him a cup of tea, then sat down on the opposite beanbag to drink her own.

Apollo closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of Constant Comment. “Great offering, Rachel.”

“Thanks,” said Rachel. “There was actually a favor I wanted to ask you, my lord.”

Apollo opened his eyes a crack, looking at Rachel suspiciously, which was entirely justified seeing as how she’d switched from _slayer of mice_ to _my lord_. “Shoot.”

“When I prophesy,” said Rachel, gripping her teacup tightly, “usually Chiron or Annabeth or someone is there to repeat it afterwards. But I wasn’t going to beg my words back from Agave. What did I say to her?”

“ _You’ll find the treasure you demand among the work of children’s hands. It will undo Hecate’s cast, and pull back the Mist at last. A turncoat’s strike, unseen and swift, restores the singer’s rightful gift_ ,” Apollo recited. “Agave should really have paid more attention to the order of events there--Phaedra was the turncoat, not you. Though Agave was probably relieved to have her plans foiled by that point. You do a pretty strong mental whammy. And my son’s toy is rightfully Leo’s, of course. I can’t wait to see what he makes.”

“Thank you,” said Rachel. She took a sip of tea, and felt steadier. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought Zeus put the kibosh on associating with humans.”

“Dad’s a little preoccupied now. They all are. I wonder how long it’ll take someone to remember that I’m the only god whose name is the same in Greek and Latin?” He flashed a wicked grin, and pulled a game cartridge out of nowhere. “Until they do, I’ve got the latest Memories Off. Wanna play?”

“You’re on,” said Rachel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it! I hope you like it. And I extend my deepest apologies to anyone who's actually been to the Guggenheim Museum. Official websites and Google image search will only get you so far.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Good With Their Hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255737) by [books4belle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/books4belle/pseuds/books4belle)




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